Midnight Juice-pops
by Aello-ello
Summary: MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME! Once it's all over Peter sits alone with his thoughts in the Stark family kitchen, until he's interrupted by a little girl as lost and alone as he is.


**AN: MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME! **

**Endgame was a beautiful movie! I absolutely loved it, and I couldn't have asked for any more perfect way to end Tony and Steve's stories. I had a few fanfiction ideas, none of which were as miserable as this, but somehow I just started writing it and here we are! This was very cathartic to write, and I hope you get something good out of it too**

**Also, I wrote a story after Infinity War last year about the Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavours Tony mentioned, so when Bruce was eating one at one of their planning meetings I nearly screamed in the cinema!**

* * *

The flowers he'd brought were wilting.

It had been a stifling day, dressed up in his black suit, the world failing apart around him.

Aunt May had told him he should bring the flowers, but he never got to give them to anyone, Happy had swooped in to put them in a vase before he could.

Happy was the one who organised for him to stay for the night too. He said it was too late for him to go all the way back to New York by himself and Peter didn't have to will to argue. He wouldn't have gone to school tomorrow anyway.

All sorts of people had been there, a few he knew, lots he recognised. He'd never seen them not at war before, either with some outside enemy or among themselves.

It was a shame it took Mr Stark's funeral to make that happen.

Peter glanced up at the sound of footsteps tapping down the stairs, tearing his eyes away from their sightless stare at the kitchen table and rapidly blinking away his unshed tears.

"Hello?" a voice whispered softly.

Morgan had stopped several steps from the bottom of the stairs, tugging at the sleeve of her pyjamas.

"Hey Morgan, something wrong?" he asked, failing to force a smile onto his face. Everything was wrong.

She rocked back and forth on her toes a little, before slowly answering,

"Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I come down and me and Daddy get-" she stopped. "Got?"

Her eyes filled with tears and she began chewing on the sleeve.

Peter's heart broke for her.

"Hey, c'mere…"

Before Peter could figure out what he was going to say next she was running towards him, and without stopping to think he scooped her up and held her on his lap. She pressed her delicate face into his chest and he could feel the damp of her tears soaking through his thin shirt to his skin.

When she had calmed he asked her gently, "What did you and Daddy get?"

She mumbled an answer, but the words were lost into her sleeve. He carefully placed his hand on her wrist and pushed it slowly down from her mouth.

"Juice-pops." she repeated softly.

"We can get juice-pops if you like?" he asked as reassuringly as he could, "Or if you want that to just be for you and Daddy we can get something else?"

"I think we should get something else - Daddy liked juice-pops."

"Well, you'll have to help me find something," he announced with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, standing up and shifting her weight so he was carrying her on his side. He felt her arms loop around his neck to hold on.

"Where am I heading?" he inquired.

"To the big cupboard beside the refrigerator." she responded, wiping her matted hair from her face with the sleeve she had been chewing.

"I think you'll have to open the door, I can't get it without dropping you" Peter told her, trying to hold her as securely as possible while she reached out to get the door.

To Peter's relief she grabbed a packet of cookies from the shelf and closed it again all in one smooth movement.

Carrying her back to the table, Peter returned to his seat, and with Morgan once again seated on his lap, she began to open the cookies.

They each ate their first in silence.

Peter was well into his second cookie before Morgan spoke again.

"You're the Peter from the photograph, aren't you?" she asked slowly, picking individual crumbs from the table and setting them in a circle.

Peter had noticed his intern photo earlier, sitting among pictures of family. He had still been staring at it when he had felt a comforting hand squeeze his shoulder and turned to find Captain America asking how he was doing. He hadn't been the most responsive, but he was sure the Captain would understand.

"Daddy talked about you sometimes," she offered, pulling him out of his thoughts. Still focused on the crumbs, she rambled on pensively, "sometimes Mommy would argue with him that it wasn't his fault you got dust-ist-if-ied but he never wanted her to say that."

Peter said nothing, giving her the space to share as much as she chose. He didn't know how to reply to that anyway.

"What was it like being dust?"

She had turned to him suddenly, her intelligent eyes searching him for an answer.

"I, um, I dunno, I don't really remember it all that much, it was over really fast."

Her puzzled look drove him to say more, "Like y'know sometimes when you're really tired and you sleep so deeply that you don't even dream?"

She nodded slowly, adding a triangle of crumbs to the inside of the circle as she considered his answer.

Peter already knew what was coming next. In his mind he begged her not to ask him. That was a question for her mother. Or Happy. Or anyone but him.

"Is that what it was like for Daddy?"

She had asked it quietly, but earnestly, her gaze resting on the crumbs.

Peter took a shaky breath, the weight of what this tiny girl had lost cutting through his own grief truly for the first time.

"I-" he choked, unable to get the words out, "I don't know?"

He hadn't meant to sound so hopeless, it wasn't what she needed.

He tried frantically to find anything to say that would be more comforting for her, but she reached up and delicately patted the top of his head, flattening his hair by a fraction. It was a strange gesture, one that he could imagine her receiving at the funeral.

"It's okay, Mommy didn't know either…"

Touched at her trying to reassure him, he could only stare at her, blinking furiously.

"Daddy loved you, y'know." she declared, lifting another cookie and snuggling her body into his chest.

"Morgan, I don't, I mean-" Peter stopped, composing himself. "YOU are the one he loved."

"I know he loved me." she replied contently, "I just thought maybe you didn't know."

Peter was still processing this declaration when she tucked her head under his chin, her breathing settling as she fell asleep in his arms.


End file.
